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The average reader spends just 20 percent of the time processing
content -- the remaining 80 percent is spent moving one’s eyes
from word to word. So says Boston-based startup Spritz, which is
looking to upend the standard paginal reading model with new
technology that it claims could allow people to read more than
twice as fast as they do now.

And one of the biggest digital conglomerates is standing firmly
behind the development: Samsung ’s forthcoming Gear 2 smartwatch and Galaxy S5
smartphone, announced at the Mobile World Congress, will
reportedly ship with Spritz in their respective email
applications. Spritz says its technology is designed
specifically for smaller mobile screens.

The technology scraps traditional “pages” for a small box within
which only one word or syllable appears at a time. By design,
this minimizes the “saccades,” or lengthy transitions, that our
eyes must make between words. It also means that e-readers no
longer have to scroll through or magnify lengthy pages of text:

The average adult reader typically clocks 300 words per minute, according to a
recent study by Staples. Spritz users, on the other hand, can
select speeds between 250 and 1,000 words per minute in
increments of 50. At the highest end of this spectrum, a
reader might get through an entire novel like Catcher in
the Rye in a little over an hour.

Each word is also aligned within the box, or “redicle,” to
emphasize its Optimal Reading Point (ORP).
Vertical hash marks and a single red letter denote each word’s
ORP, or the fragment whereby meaning is most easily processed.

The company also determined that the human eye can only focus on
a maximum of 13 characters at once, and so longer words are
hyphenated accordingly. Spritz also uses a specially-designed
font for maximum readability.

In the FAQ section of its site, the
company envisions 'spritzing' for email, texting, social
media, closed captioning, digital books and also to embed
messages within images or videos.

The company says that the new reading technique is immediately
learnable by children and adults alike, with no special training
required. Three years of “stealth” research also revealed that
retention is just as good with spritzing as it is with
traditional reading.